This year marks a major milestone in the history of the Baylor Bears football team: the 40th anniversary of the “Miracle on the Brazos,” a stunning victory over the University of Texas on November 9, 1974. In celebration of that fact, legendary head coach Grant Teaff is hosting a reunion of the 1974 team on Friday night that coincides with Homecoming 2014 celebrations, and we’ve been working around the clock to add tons of additional resources related to that 34-24 victory, the first time in 17 meetings that the Bears had bested the Longhorns.

The story of the game – how it seemed like Baylor was doomed to a 17th loss to the Longhorns, only to have a blocked punt and a final go-ahead touchdown that sealed the victory – is well-known and can be read in detail at places like this Bleacher Report story on the top 10 Moments in Baylor Football History. Or, if you’d prefer a homegrown trip down memory lane, you can watch a video presentation released by Baylor Athletics in 1984 that takes a look back at the season with help from Coach Teaff and Frank Fallon, the legendary “voice of the Bears.”

Click on the image to watch “The Miracle on the Brazos, Ten Years Later”

There are also plenty of photos documenting that game – the anticipation, the gameplay action, the celebration – including gems like the ones below.

Finally, you can read the official gameday program from cover …

… to rosters and ads for long-gone steakhouses …

… to the back cover.

We’re looking forward to meeting some of these gridiron heroes at Coach Teaff’s event tonight, and to give them a chance to search the Baylor University Libraries Athletics Archive for more memories preserved in digital format.

Oh, and it goes without saying that we’re pulling for the current incarnation of our Baylor Bears to beat the University of Kansas at McLane Stadium on Saturday. Sic ’em, Bears!

Additional Content

> See all 105 items related to the “Miracle on the Brazos” in the Baylor University Libraries Athletics Archive

With apologies to the fine folks at AMC. But doesn’t Allyson look pretty boss with a katana? (Click to enlarge, if you dare.)

All of us in the DPG are big fans of AMC’s post-zombie-apocalypse series The Walking Dead. We watch for various reasons – escapism, mostly – but we all love its unique blend of storytelling, pathos and outright, ick-inducing gore. If you’re not a fan, or if you’ve managed to miss the barrage of ads related to this fact, you may not know that the new season will premiere on Sunday night, and we are unilaterally excited.

That got us to thinking: where do zombies show up on the pages of our campus newspaper, the Baylor Lariat? Surely, over the course of more than a hundred years, there would be at least a few mentions of the word “zombies.” Turns out there were 22, and we wanted to highlight a few of them here.

Earliest reference: June 20, 1947

No, that’s not a typo: the oldest reference to zombies comes in 1947, but it’s in a context that may surprise you. In an ad for Snaman’s Women’s Wear and Shoes, we are informed that a new shipment of Zombies (a shoe style) have arrived and are available for the low, low price of just $5.95.

Oldest Use of Zombies as Metaphor for Listlessness: May 8, 1959

Shirley Henderson’s regular Friday column was given over to covering the aftermath of 1959’s “May Day,” a precursor to today’s Dia Del Oso. She conjures up a terrifying crustacean-undead hybrid by mentioning the sight of sunburned students “walking stiffly around the campus like zombies,” red enough to look like “broiled lobsters.” Maybe she was having a premonition of the Walking Dead season 4 episode where several zombies had an unfortunate encounter with a fire set at a backwoods still by fan favorite character Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus)?

Throughout the next couple of decades, there are numerous references in the Lariat archives to Zombies, as the word appears in the title of a number of movies shown at Waco’s movie houses. My favorite title? The Plague of the Zombies (1966).

First Use of Zombies as Metaphor for Social Ill of the Day: January 13, 1983

The question of whether or not video games contribute to delinquency has gone back decades, and it had made an appearance in the pages of the Lariat as early as 1983, when Shelly Williamson wrote this opinion piece about whether or not video games are turning children into “video zombies.” Best part of the piece: Williamson’s citing Asteroids, Pac Man and Donkey Kong as potential carriers of “zombieism.” By today’s standards, those video games are about as inoffensive and non-threatening as a basket full of rainbow-colored kittens.

First Use of Zombieism as Symptom of Caffeine Withdrawal: September 24, 2004

Almost exactly one decade ago, Kevin Chandler wrote a story about the “oft-used, oft-abused’ nature of coffee on Baylor’s campus, and he opens with this sentence: “It’s 8 a.m., and zombies are invading campus.” Chandler outlines the kinds of coffee available on campus, including those served by the recently opened Starbucks location in the Dutton Avenue Parking Garage (closed in 2013) and the Java City location formerly housed in the Moody Library garden level (replaced by, ironically, a Starbucks in the lobby).

We hope you’ve enjoyed this look at the ways shambling, undead, unstoppable, reanimated corpses are used in the pages of a well-regarded collegiate newspaper. And if anyone on our team seems more tired or paranoid than usual on Monday morning, you’ll know why: we spent our Sunday evening glued to the TV, intently focused and staring like …. well, you know.